


the tack room

by vegetas



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, but we all know the look he gave jopson after this, i apologize that this tone got horny, no apologies for edward little growing up around horses cause he seems like he might have
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:15:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetas/pseuds/vegetas
Summary: "Thomas flashed him a look that he did not need to translate into words, turning the lamp up just so, enough to make his task easier but not completely reveal anything uncouth between he and the officer now standing over him in such a manner should anyone happen to see."





	the tack room

 

> The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on
> 
> and the horse looks at him in silence.
> 
> They are so silent, they are in another world.
> 
>  
> 
> D.H. Lawrence

 

“Lieutenant Little, your button has nearly fallen off.”

 

In all honesty Little barely understood the words, though he heard them quite clearly, as they broke through his thoughts. He’d kept his head down all the way from that dismal half point where Hornby dropped to the ice and was, for all purposes, lost to the world. Perhaps from his exhaustion, or the habit of keeping his face shielded from the screaming wind. In his childhood, he’d tipped his chin down when he was troubled about something, his eyes scanning the ground, watching his boots as they stepped one after the other though he directed them nowhere, which is what he was looking at now as he traipsed through the companionway.

 

“Lieutenant.”

 

He stopped, this time, just short of Jopson, who had dropped out of capriciously thin air to stand before him. Just over his shoulder Little rested his eyes on the Great Cabin door, listening to the rough laughter traveling from within it with a kernel of disdain. 

 

“That button, sir,” Jopson repeated, and Edward let his head fall back towards his chest to look at it. It was in the furthest row, loose, as Jopson had said, dangling only by its shank.

 

“Got caught on Hornby,” he muttered, thinking aloud more than answering, his stiff hand raising without thought to twist it roughly off. He inspected it, the thread protruding now in a fray from the hole. He pocketed it, making to push past, but Jopson’s hand on his arm stilled him, their bodies canted unnaturally in the narrow passage. 

 

“The Captain is disposed with Mr. Blanky at the moment, Sir,” he said. “If you’d like, I am between duties and can repair it before he receives you.”

  
Little let his stare fall on the top of Jopson’s head, will relenting.

  
“If you can spare it,” he rasped, and Thomas lifted his eyes to him and nodded.

 

“Just step here into the pantry, Sir -,”

 

Edward let Thomas duck him into the closet, positioning them so that the Lieutenant’s broader back faced out, obstructing the view to any passerby as he undid Edward’s buttons with his nimble fingers, opening his coat so that he could get to both sides of the panel easily without forcing him to remove it.

 

He had done this before, to greet Edward off the ice, only not to sew a button on, but to sew himself inside, his face finding its way to Edward’s neck, his arms climbing up under his back and hands rubbing briskly there, all of him squeezing firmly to pass the heat to him and coax Edward’s embrace around him.

 

“What happened to Mr. Hornby?” Thomas asked, turning to rattle through the top drawer of the linen chest for his kit and scissors. Edward should have known he wouldn’t have missed his remark. If he could identify Edward just by the sound of his footfalls...

 

“Cold got to him,” Edward found himself sighing. He’d learned early in their intimacies that it was better served for him to report details than pivot around them.   
  


Thomas flashed a look that he did not need to translate into words, turning the lamp up just so, enough to make his task easier but not completely reveal anything uncouth between he and the officer now standing over him in such a manner should anyone happen to see.  

  
“I’m terribly sorry, Edward,” Thomas whispered, rocking the eye of the thick needle back and forth against the fine bone of his wrist, tugging the tail of the knotted double topstitch thread. “To have to see such a thing…” 

  
“It’s least of my worries,” Edward said, which sounded unflinchingly bitter, but in the current state of things could not be helped for its honesty.

 

“Your business with Mr. Collins, then,” Thomas continued, getting to the point and dropping to a knee to better align himself with the work. Edward closed his eyes, trying to be still to make it easier on him.

 

“There’s no Whiskey left,” Edward said coarsely and there was a snip as Thomas’ little sewing scissors clipped off some end. “And Fitzjames made me bring the girl...”

 

“Lady Silence?” Thomas paused, lifting his head where he was stationed between his legs, needle poised delicately in the corner of his mouth, between his teeth. Edward looked down impassively. Thomas read his face and the needle twitched. “Button, please,” he said, and Edward fished in his pocket again for it, dropping it into Thomas’ waiting palm.

 

There was a pause, and Edward  watched as Thomas stared at his hand, reaching back to set the button on the top of the dresser, and slid the needle into Edward's hem where it wouldn't budge. The thread hung unfinished on his coat front as Thomas traded his task for another, more important, one. 

 

“Your hands are still freezing,” Thomas whispered, taking Edward’s fingers between both his warm ones, blowing on his knuckles and rubbing them briskly. He laid his cheek against them for a moment, and Edward felt the stiffness ease, the heat of Thomas’ blush tempting him to consider other warm places on his body.   
  
“I’m fine, Tommy,” Edward breathed, knowing not to indulge. “Better to get on with it…”

 

Thomas looked up at him, clearly unconvinced, but he obeyed, laying a final chaste kiss on his palm, reluctantly resuming the mending.

 

“You should rest a moment, Edward. No one would begrudge you,” Thomas said, busied with the button. His voice dropped considerably and Edward found that he seemed to lean closer within the interior of his jacket, his shoulder brushing over the padded place where Edward's waistcoat met his trousers as he moved with more than coincidence. “He’ll happily last another hour with Mr. Blanky.”

  
“It doesn’t matter,” Edward said dully. “No sense to wait on bad news.” Hornby was dead, and the Captain needed to know, to whatever end. 

 

Perhaps if things had gone a different route the thought of an uninterrupted hour might be more enticing, but Edward regarded the implied lewdness of Thomas’ position with only fleeting recognition.

 

Thomas’ scissors clicked again, and he surveyed his work, looking at the panel of the coat with narrowed eyes, his lashes casting a prominent shadow on the roundness of his cheeks. It must have satisfied him, because he stood up, doing up the coat again as he went, and pressing closer with what such proximity afforded. He picked up Edward’s limp hands, adjusting his cuffs and sleeves, and carefully aligning his seams.   
  
“Then let’s be sure you have your bearings,” Thomas murmured, brushing his face against Edward’s ear, dropping a kiss there. He had reached his arms around his neck to straighten his collar, bringing their chests flush and Edward could not stop himself from momentarily touching his trim waist before he remembered where he was.

 

“What did you think of, as you took your walk?” Thomas said conversationally, in response, and Edward huffed dryly at that. Usually the question of what occupied his mind on the lonely trudges to Erebus were saved for other times - as the contents of Edward’s answers served better demonstrated rather than told. He was only sorry to say that Thomas might have been disappointed by it this time.

 

“Lancelot,” Edward replied, his mouth feeling cracked and raw.

  
“The Knight?” Thomas said with honest surprise, and a tint of laughter in his voice.

 

“My horse,” Edward clarified, the words rough in his throat. His face felt too taught with the windburn circling his eyes. “My father gave him to me. He was too ugly to stud - one of the biggest stallions we had…”

 

“How old were you?” Thomas probed. “Was this the one who bit?”

  
“No,” Edward said. “That was Cleopatra. I was ten. He was nearly eighteen hands. His sire was a Suffolk Punch...his dam was a nasty creature,” Edward rambled.

  
“How did you handle him?” Thomas continued, and Edward furrowed his brow. Thomas was smoothing the edges of his hair where they were frayed by the strip of the wind.   
  
“My father was under the impression if I could manage him, I could manage anything after,” Edward continued, remembering the first time he had seen the massive creature up close - square chested and huffing in the mist of the early morning falling through the stables. Their head groom, Pete Hampton,  left him in the tack room alone with the giant, offering no help this time, only an order that he would be back in under an hour with his father to look it over and a single overturned box to assist him.

 

“And how did his advice turn out?” Thomas questioned. “Lift your head,” he whispered, touching his chin, and Edward did so, not realizing he had dropped it once more. Thomas stroked through the part in his hair that had been mussed under wig and cap, and then took his thumbs and smoothed his eyebrows, catching the frost still there. He combed through his whiskers, and his sideburns, his fingers coming away slightly wet from the snow melt.

 

“I found him to only be a very good horse,” Edward muttered tiredly, staring at Thomas. He did not usually like the fussing that his rank observed, finding it impractical -  but Thomas ignored such things, preening him with his lovely, clever hands. “It was a joke, you know,” he furthered. “Between my family. I could not bear losing a horse enough to be a Dragoon, like my Grandfather… better to join the Navy and lose a man instead...” His words trailed off.

 

“We are lucky for your tender heart, then,” Thomas replied, drawing his gaze, his eyes soft with understanding. “Man or beast.”

 

Edward hummed. 

 

“There,” Thomas appraised, finished, and Edward realized that in the time it had taken to spiff him up he had calmed significantly, his appearance not the only thing needing tidying before reception with the Captain. The unspoken frustration boiling in his breast at the events of the past few hours, and the loss of Mr. Hornby under his watch, were dulled now, and he would not find himself victim to voicing them impertinently or with ill temper when he delivered his report.

 

Thomas, taking a knowing risk, kissed his chapped mouth gently, and with that Edward could not help himself, bringing his hand to cradle the back of Thomas’ neck, holding him there for a moment. He always reminded himself to be tempered, as he did in all things. Horses had taught him that pressure was to be light, and diligence liberal, when making corrections. 

 

“Will you come and change the bed warmer again, later,” Edward said, his fingers pushing up through the neatly kept hair on the back of Thomas’ head. “The brazier gets cold quickly.”

 

He knew it was selfish, even low of him, to treat Thomas as some sort of reward for his own miseries, but what good were such unexpected treasures if they were not accepted fully and admired?

  
“Whatever pleases you,” Thomas said, mouth opening to him, his hand slipping down, the web of his fingers catching on another button, as if to undo his good work, and Edward caught his wrist, holding it firmly. 

 

“It pleases me,” Edward whispered, their foreheads touching as he tried to fight against his instinct to rip his coat off of him - send all the buttons scattering, and watch as Thomas diligently picked each one off the floor one by one - and find finer outlets for the discontent he felt. 

 

There was a muffled  _bang_ of something from the cabin, the clatter of a table leaf hinging when leaned upon too heavily or a cabinet door being slammed, and they broke apart. Edward stepped out of the pantry, looking at Thomas who was now taught with worry, staring in the direction of the noise.

  
“Wait outside,” Edward said quietly, straightening himself up to his full height. Thomas followed the lines of his profile with concerned thoughts he subdued so that they did not show on his face when he turned to him once more. “There’ll be work enough for both of us," Edward finished, mouth serious and unaffected, a Lieutenant again. 

 

Edward’s eyes slid to the hollow of his throat, something he knew he did despite himself, which thrilled Thomas as much as it sometimes confounded him. He could not make up his mind on the subject of these facets and what they proved the closer they became. That unfolding of all Edward’s tenderness on him, or the streak of intensity that there also lurked. He was a boy who loved horses, and one who demonstrated often that he knew also how to break them without folding.

 

It was a rare man who could take his orders without complaint as Little did, and bear such cold the way he did, and the duties that increased each day, and still find the energies he did to spend on Thomas Jopson in the slim reprieves they allowed themselves.  _Head down, ahead of the plow_ , he thought. 

Either way, he was excited by it and perhaps that was all that mattered in the prevailing maze of winter they were caught within. They could not control much, but what little they could was gripped quite tightly between them.

  
“Don’t fix that collar,” Edward said lowly, the tone an exhibit of that strange darker mood, like the flick of a crop on his own flank. Edward’s heavy brow cast a shadow on his eyes. Thomas’ stomach tightened at the unexpectedness of the order, automatically going to right it under the neckline of his vest.

 

“Of course, sir,” was all he could offer, staying himself, knowing he did not deserve another disappointment.

 

**Author's Note:**

> as always, forgive any inaccuracy i'm just a dummy who loves two boys!
> 
> i've read a fic or two that hints at little maybe being a Country Boy and i LIKE THAT. i think it suits his personality.
> 
> if anybody has a prompt or w/e just hit me in the comments :v


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